Everyone was complicit: the workers who entered the U.S. illegally, the ranchers who hired them illegally, the Border Patrol who normalized the process, the U.S. government that turned a blind eye to an abusive system, the Mexican government complicit in the abuse, even the Mexican banks that failed to disburse the worker’s retirement money – half a billion dollars by today’s standards. http://specials.texasstandard.org/help-wanted/index.html

"I have this theory about writing. You start at the stupid end of the book and then bash your brains out for years. If you’re lucky you end up at the smart end of the book and then everybody thinks you’re smart." - Salman Rushdie on Live Wire, episode #345 http://www.livewireradio.org/episode345

“Another myth is the myth of the urban underclass; and while, yes, latino populations can be characterized as having low income, low education and less access to care, nonetheless for seventy-five years latino males have had the highest rate of labor force participation of any group in California. That’s almost three generations of workers.” - David Hayes Baptista http://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=554509052:554509062

Of the many, many podcasts that touched on the issue of weapons law and the lack of movement in DC on that subject, this was probably the best one I have heard so far http://www.decodedc.com/214/ We have to end the stranglehold that the NRA has on congress if we’re ever going to see a change in the laws that govern who can have firearms in the US. Until that happens we’d better get used to events like the latest mass shooting.

This one was a seriously mixed bag. The segment on Blade Runner was interesting. I agreed with the summation on the media's (and the public's) fascination with numbers of dead. Really couldn't care less about country music. I quit listening to country when I stopped riding in the car with my parents. http://www.wnyc.org/story/on-the-media-2017-10-06/